Television

2 January 20132 January 2013

Filler: Hell on Wheels

I have an on-again, off-again relationship with Westerns. They’re in, they’re out, I like ’em, I don’t care for ’em.

I think the creative vision behind each Western title I experience goes a long way towards my liking them or not: Unforgiven – all time favourite; Silverado – all time favourite; True Grit – overhyped but entertaining nonetheless – I suppose you get the drift. Or not.

The Hell on Wheels pilot tried to be many things for this genre – too many things, I think: it’s about revenge but it’s also about the newly emancipated nigra, as well as – I expect from our toffee-sounding Brit female character – a woman’s place in this world, and encompassing one and all is the railway, that unifier, that beast, that engine of progress. Okay, that’s only four things but still, it felt crowded and well-meaning and –

What can I say? It takes itself so seriously. And the vengeful hero lead character – he looks like a newly promoted O.C. extra with facial hair. Nope, the show’s not for me.

1 January 20131 January 2013

Filler

Housekeeping here. Happy New Year to you, too. Just warning you that some filler posts will be going up on the blog this month – some that I’ve dug out of almost-forgotten holding areas, others that I’d just dashed off at some point and completely forgotten about.

They may be a little… random.

And if you don’t like ’em, please don’t change channels: drop a line – start a conversation or something.

31 December 201231 December 2012

2012 on Screen

I’ve seen more titles this year than in any other since official records began in 2003. I’d like to think the year’s expanded viewing-slash-research goes some way toward explaining why posts on this blog have tended towards commentary rather than craft.

Features

Drive
Tropa De Elite (Elite Squad) and Tropa De Elite – O Inimigo Agora E Outro (Elite Squad – The Enemy Within)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
The Avengers
Safe
Never Let Me Go
Armadillo
The Angel’s Share
Dredd
This Must Be the Place
La Jetee
End of Watch

Yes, that’s more than ten for the year but those 2011-and-earlier titles were just so damned good that I had to name-drop them.

Television

Panama-hat-tips to The Good Wife, Mad Men, Justified, Nurse Jackie and Breaking Bad for continuing to be must-see telly three or more seasons into their respective runs. It’s sad that Mad Men and Breaking Bad will finish in the coming year but all good things do come to an end.

Hung – Season 2
Justified – Season 3
The Good Wife – Seasons 3-4
Smith
Inside Men – Season 1
Dirk Gently – Season 1
Game of Thrones – Seasons 1-3
Mad Men – Season 5
Nurse Jackie – Season 4
Hounds
The Newsroom – Season 1
Hit & Miss
Longmire – Season 1
The Golden Hour
Breaking Bad – Season 5
The Bletchley Circle
Last Resort
Monroe – Season 2
Boardwalk Empire – Season 1
Vegas – Season 1
The Sopranos – Season 1

Late adopter excuse/s for ‘discovering’ Smith, Boardwalk Empire and Sopranos.

A great year for UK telly with The Bletchley Circle and Hit & Miss.

And sun-hat-tips to the excellent The Golden Hour that almost, almost, made me want to watch the Olympics, and the lamented Hounds.

Theatre

Leilani Unasa’s His Mother’s Son
P-Lab’s Hypothesis One
Louise Tu’u‘s Gaga: the unmentionable

Disclosure: All three pieces are by Banana Boat colleagues,

31 December 201231 December 2012

2012 in Print

Yah, it’s the end of 2012 already so time for a quick blow-out.

Another average year in terms of quantity of reading. Texts, as you can see immediately below, were a bit on the thin side.

Books

Other People’s Wars – Nicky Hager
Road Dogs – Elmore Leonard

Comics

Ongoing titles Walking Dead, Powers and Scalped continue to rate with excellent storytelling. Castle Waiting, Dolltopia and RASL were very pleasant surprises.

RIP – Thomas Ott
Castle Waiting Volumes 1 and 2 – Linda Medley
Tamara Drewe – Posy Simmonds
Walking Dead Volume 15 – We Find Ourselves – Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard
The Killer Volumes 1 and 3 – Matz and Luc Jacamon
Dolltopia – Abbi Densen
Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense: Being Human – Mike Mignola
Scalped Volume 7 – Rez Blues – Jason Aaron and R M Guera
RASL Volumes 1-3 – Jeff Smith
Powers Volume 14 – Gods – Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming

Scripts

This year’s overall slant towards television writing is represented below with the number of pilots listed.

3:10 to Yuma – Michael Brandt & Derek Haas
Analyze This – Peter Tolan and Harold Ramis and Kenneth Lonergan
Gilmore Girls – Pilot – Amy Sherman-Palladino
Arrested Development – Pilot – Mitchell Hurwitz
My Name is Gary Cooper – Victor Rodger
30 Rock – Pilot and S01E07 – Tina Fey
Groundhog Day – Danny Rubin & Harold Ramis
The West Wing S02E04 – Aaron Sorkin
Justified S01E08 – Benjamin Cavell
Django Unchained – Quentin Tarantino

I’m a little worried I might’ve spoiled things a bit by reading Django Unchained before its opening here in New Zild but I enjoyed the script heaps more than the script for Inglorious Basterds (the film of which I have yet to see in its entirety [and those bits I have chanced across have been intriguingly tasty]).

21 October 201224 October 2012

Gild

Okay, (I suppose) I’m excited about the upcoming third season of The Walking Dead when one of the publicity stills caught my eye:

Compare that to our introduction to her in the comic:

Am I being nitpicky in thinking, What’s with the Masai She-Warrior shit?

14 October 2012

Oh Alright Maybe

A flurry of Facebook comments from Stevo and Motorbike Steve about the return of The Walking Dead behooves me to confess that The Goddess and I started watching the second season a while back and got two eps -, no wait, three -, hang on.

… Whoa. Okay. Disappointment in the second season was so deep that it wasn’t even entered into my viewing diary.

I’m as shocked as you are, believe me.

But back to the story. We got however many eps into the season and She turned to me and said what I’d been thinking for all the eps subsequent to the season opener: This is boring. So we stopped.

The Walking Dead - Michonne — Michonne and travelling companions (“The Walking Dead” #19).

But Season 3 beckons with the promise of Michonne and the penitentiary arc and… godsdammit, that arc was just mindblowingly awful (but in a good way) that I just have to relive it, and it’s been too, too long since we’ve had a bad-ass no-nonsense African American heroine like Strange Days‘ Mace.

Strange Days - Angela Bassett — Angela Bassett as Mace in “Strange Days” (1995).

Yeh okay, I’m in.

22 September 2012

Hounds RIP

(Before you lot get excited, this post is about the TV show, not the departure of one or more of our menagerie.)

A little while back, I got an outta-the-blue email asking if I was interested in plugging (or not plugging) an upcoming TV show. That, my Beloved Readers, is one of the mean reasons why I’ve clung onto this blog: for free shit.

There were a few hiccups along the way – including a greyhound by the the name of Lundy–~~bain~~–dixon–watson who needed some audio finessing – but the show was assured, low key and damned funny.

How funny? The Goddess, The Girl (who’s at university now) and I watched the pilot and we all laughed. Not together, mind: we each found something to laugh out loud at. From a crowd that was a hard one to begin with – when I suggested it for a viewing the looks from my fellow viewers-to-be were none-too-friendly – that was something to hold on to. And it wasn’t just us – the critics liked it, too.

Of course, it was programmed to screen at 10pm on a Friday night.

And, of bloody course, it got cancelled.

It’s out on DVD now: a damned fine Kiwi comedy that I’ll proudly be adding to my library.

Go on: try it.

8 September 2012

Another Letter to Aaron Sorkin

Dear Mr Sorkin

Further to my letter of 23 October 2007.

Your latest show, The Newsroom, has graced our screens and I want to say a couple of things: thank you, and welcome back. We’re enjoying the show, and we’re glad to hear there’s a second season due next year.

It’s nice to have you back on the small screen, Mr Sorkin. We missed you.

Yours sincerely

David Mamea

Post script: Some people have taken issue with your self-plagiarism.

You know what? I find it very comforting.

29 August 2012

Gone Soft

Channel-surfing earlier in the month led to us tripping over a Law & Order ep. Jack McCoy was now the District Attorney; reporting to him were new faces Cutter and Rubirosa. Anita van Buren was still the lieutenant down at the 27th Precinct – she had her own new faces in the form of Lupo and Bernard.

Curious, we tuned in.

The ep’s A story followed the detectives, soon augmented by the district attorney’s office, as they raced to track down an online blogger preparing for a big and messy shooting spree. Y’know: the usual L&O stuff that is so slick and smart and fast it still makes the majority of cop shows out there dumb and slow.

The B story was more interesting in that it followed van Buren (S Epatha Merkerson) as she underwent some scans for what we presumed was cancer. We learned more about her in this one ep than we had in the preceding decade and a half of (admittedly occasional) watching. Something was up – especially since the ep ended on her getting the results of her scan and showing us her reaction.

“That’s not right,” I said to my Goddess as the credits rolled. “They’ve gone soft, they have.” She nodded and yawned and picked up her briefly forgotten horseriding book.

A quick google to get to the bottom of this abberation revealed that the ep was the series’ finale.

Ah. Well.

Just this once, then.

22 July 201218 July 2012

Fifth and Final

Yay that X-Files alumnus Vince Gilligan‘s Breaking Bad has returned to the airwaves Stateside.

Boo that a). it’s the final season, and b). that it’ll be split up into two parts of eight eps each*.

All good things must, I suppose, come to an end.

Fortress Mamea awaits our free-to-air broadcasters’ programming whims.